The Flaming Skies
by Emjen Enla
Summary: [Fightingverse] Kees Van Dijk killed a child to get Kaz Brekker's attention. Kaz Brekker will not stand for it.


**I don't own SoC. Title is from the folk song "Idumea," which is something I sang in choir in high school.**

**The style of this piece is kind of experimental. Hopefully it's not melodramatic or completely incoherent. I wrote it in a couple hours of furious writing, which is surprising given that I normally don't write things this fast.**

**Warnings: murder of a child, torture**

* * *

_The weather was beautiful the day that Councilman Kees Van Dijk's private guards snatched a twelve-year-old Dregs pocket-picker named Aart off the street. He was not a chosen target. The guards had simply been instructed to find and kidnap the youngest member of the Dregs they could find, and Aart had been unlucky enough to walk by._

_The guards took Aart to one of the many abandoned buildings which litter Ketterdam and proceeded to torture the child to death. At first Aart had tried to be brave, to be worthy of the crow-and-cup tattoo on his arm. He dreamed of rescue, but there was none. It took almost forty-eight hours for Gustaaf-the Dregs lieutenant in charge of the child pick-pockets-to realize someone was missing. However Gustaaf just assumed Aart had gotten distracted and forgotten to come back as the child members of the Dregs were wont to do, so he didn't report the disappearance to his boss. Aart died begging for mercy before anyone even realized they should have been looking for him._

_Kees Van Dijk was not present for any of the proceedings: he couldn't stand the sight of blood._

_The first Kaz Brekker knew of the disappearance of one of the newest members of his gang was when Aart's body turned up nailed to the side of the Crow Club surrounded by a bloody message mockingly asking if Van Dijk had Dirtyhands' attention yet and announcing a parley to be held at dawn three days hence._

_It was blatantly obvious that the meeting was a trap. There were very few people in the Barrel who would be stupid enough to fall for it. The problem was that it was a trap the whole of the Barrel knew about. Everyone from the bosses for the other gangs to the littlest street urchin would be waiting to see how Kaz Brekker responded to the mindless slaughter of one of his own. Simply not showing would not be enough; something had to be done in retaliation._

_In the end, the spider Minna was the one to come up with the seed of the idea which became the Dregs' revenge. It was a plan that only she could have come up with because-unlike most Barrel rats-she possessed the ability to scale buildings, and because-also unlike most of the denizens of the Barrel-she believed in things like justice and fairness. Kaz Brekker believed that justice was a lie and that wishing for fairness was a waste of time, but he also knew that most of the Ghezen-fearing merchers in their clean little houses did not hold the same opinion. Minna's idea would be a show for the whole of Ketterdam, but it would also be a direct strike on the merchers and whatever spare moral separation they had made between themselves and the Barrel._

_Minna proposed the plan to her boss in a closed room with no one else present, but others were quickly brought on. After all, this was less a plot and more of a political protest, the latter of which Kaz Brekker knew nothing about as that his response to all people his disagreed with tended to be to rob them of everything they had. Fortunately, he had friends who had much more experience with such things and they were more than willing to help._

_The actual preparation was done by the surviving members of the team that had broken into the Ice Court, Dirtyhands' spiders and the lieutenants of the Dregs, but when the Barrel rats crept out to set things in place the night before Kees Van Dijk and Ambroos Baas's sham meeting many more were brought along to help with the heavy lifting, not all of whom could be trusted to keep their mouths shut about something as exciting at this. Of course, that was the point. In fact, before he left the Slat that night, Kaz Brekker instructed the rest of his gang to spend the night spreading one message through the Barrel: "When the sun rises, look to the Church of Barter."_

_When the sun rose the following morning, they did look and they were in for a surprise._

* * *

Of all the things Kaz Brekker reasonably wanted to do with his time. Handling real skeletons was near the bottom. Skeletons were better than bodies which the flesh had not yet rotted off of, but they were still the remains of human beings and that brought too much back.

Kaz crouched on the floor of one of the many private chapels of the Church of Barter, securing a noose around one of the half a dozen or so of the skeletons Nina had liberated from their final resting places. When he'd heard the plan, Pim had wanted to kill some merchers in revenge for what they had done to Aart and use their bodies, but Inej had quickly pointed out that if this was going to have the desired effect, they had to take the moral high road. Therefore they used the skeletons.

Nina, at least, seemed to be enjoying it. She was using her powers to guide the skeletons out the window of the chapel and hooking the rigid wire hooks wound around their necks to the cables Inej and the spiders had strung between each of the towering fingers of the Church of Barter. They had all drilled holes in the bones and strung the skeletons together with more wire to get them to hold their shape without Nina's interference. The process had been a long and thoroughly horrendous affair undertaken in the living room of the Van Eck mansion while Wylan and Jesper took turns keeping Wylan's mother from coming downstairs and seeing what they were doing. Kaz wished he were out helping with stringing banners or cables instead of in here, but his leg had given out during the climb to this chapel and even he could admit if he tried to go climbing around outside right now he'd likely fall to his death. Unfortunately that left him with the skeletons and too much time to think.

Kaz knew many people blamed themselves for not stopping what had happened to Aart, but none of them were as guilty as Kaz himself was. Kaz had known, or at the very least suspected, that Gustaaf was incompetent, but he'd been a tight spot when Dirix had died and he'd needed to replace him quickly. He should have realized Gustaaf would eventually lose a child with dire results. The first thing he'd done upon returning to the Slat with Aart's body was relieve Gustaaf of his position. Roeder was overseeing the pick-pockets until Kaz had time to come up with a suitable replacement. He would not let another child die due to the fault of the people supposed to be protecting them.

He was aware that half the people in the know about this plan thought he was only doing it to protect his reputation. He had worked hard to be viewed as a fair boss who would protect you as long as you didn't do anything stupid, but that was not what this was. He could not stop looking at what had happened to Aart and seeing what had happened to Jordie. Jordie had died because a grown man had been willing to do anything to get what he wanted. Aart was the same.

Kaz was not sure when he'd started caring about protecting the children of the Barrel from the fate he and Jordie had suffered. He certainly hadn't cared when Espen and Minna had joined the Dregs years ago, but somehow he cared now. Fourteen years ago Kaz had been naive and believed in goodness and Jordie had been naive and arrogant. They had been fools, but they had also been children and they had not deserved what they'd gotten. Inej had been right when she'd said it, all those years ago. Aart had also been a child, and he deserved better than what he'd gotten. Espen and Minna had been children too. So had Inej and Wylan and Jesper and Nina and Matthias and Nina's new girlfriend and Anika and Pim and Keeg and Dirix and Rotty and all the other Barrel rats Kaz had brought into the Dregs over the years. They had all been children and they'd all deserved better than they'd gotten.

He was still hazy on what that realization actually met for him. Kaz didn't believe in sappy things like justice. He didn't believe good things would happen to people just because they deserved better. He would laugh at anyone who said such things, but he was also done with this. What Van Dijk had done to Aart was disgusting and wrong, and Kaz wanted to make Ketterdam acknowledge that for once.

Long story short; Kaz liked this plan even if it involved stringing up skeletons.

* * *

_In the gray light just before dawn, Kees Van Dijk, Ambroos Baas and a contingent of Van Dijk's guards-mostly the same men who had tortured a child to death mere days before-were waiting on a bridge leading between the Barrel and the theoretically more upright parts of the city. The bridge had no cover on the Barrel side and what little there had been had been removed in the previous days. It was almost, the Barrel rats whispered to each other, like Kees Van Dijk thought Kaz Brekker was stupid. The trap could not have been more obvious if Van Dijk had tried._

_Somehow, however, Van Dijk still went out that morning thinking Kaz Brekker would be in his hands by lunchtime. He was sadly mistaken. The sky lightened and lightened, but there was no sign of the Dregs leader on the other side of the bridge. Van Dijk was just beginning to realize that Brekker might not show, when the sun burst over the horizon and one of the guards shouted, "Sir! Look!"_

_Now this particular bridge had a very good view of the Church of Barter. This was not by accident; the decision had been made to appeal to Baas's religious sensibilities and to Van Dijk's sense of self-importance. However, whatever symbolism Van Dijk had wanted was not what he got, because overnight the Church of Barter had suffered the single greatest act of vandalism in its entire history._

_The spires and main body of the building had been splattered with red paint of a shade so horrifying that mediks were actually brought in to confirm it wasn't blood. Cables were strung between each of the spires, many holding skeletons wired to hang in the same position Aart had on the wall of the Crow Club. Coroners later identified the bodies as those of every member of the Merchant Council who had died in the past two decades, though no one was quite sure how the skeletons had been stolen since the wild stories told by guards about the skeletons getting up and walking out of their tombs on their own obviously weren't true._

_But the skeletons were only part of it. Hanging from the top chapel of the Church of Barter's middle finger was a massive banner with a painting of the Dregs crow-and-cup. Art scholars brought in to identify the painter in the hopes of finding at least one person to prosecute were stumped, though they did comment that the painting had been done in an extremely short period of time, likely less than two days. They completely missed the sigil of the Van Eck family cleverly hidden in the whorls of the crow's wing._

_Then there was the message. It was painted in massive black letters on bolts of canvas strung on the cables not holding skeletons. The writing was done in a distinctive, spidery hand which the same art scholars who couldn't name the artist of the crow-and-cup painting believed had been copied from a smaller example with the express purpose of retaining the original writer's handwriting. A couple members of the many members of the Merchant Council who had run afoul of the Bastard of the Barrel over the years were eventually able to confirm the handwriting was Kaz Brekker's. Those who looked at the content of the message and assumed the words were not Brekker's own were right; though none guessed the words were actually those the Wraith._

_The message was this: _Those who harm innocents will pay.

_The effect of this event was paradoxical. On one hand, it made the Merchant Council even more fervent in their desire to see Dirtyhands hang, but they quickly realized that the decent, prayerful folk they needed to form their army of law against the Barrel were generally too terrified to raise a finger. After all, these people said, if the Bastard of the Barrel had the power to deface the Church of Barter what would he do to me and my family if I stood against him?_

_News and images of the event traveled across the world and were met with a variety of responses. Some shook their heads and muttered that Ketterdam had really gone downhill. Old, conceited people everywhere filed the incident away in a list of proofs that the younger generation were going to destroy the world. The king of Ravka made the mistake of imagining how his courtiers would respond to a similar happening in Ravka and nearly laughed himself sick, and the noted privateer Sturmhond sent a letter to Kaz Brekker congratulating him for "reaching a level of dramatic I never thought to aspire for." A Grisha Healer named Hanne would carefully clip out the article and annotated it with the words, "Looks like you're having fun visiting old haunts. Hope to see you soon. I love you."_

_As for Ambroos Baas? Only time would tell what his reaction was._

_However, there was one person whose reaction was not considered but really should have been._

* * *

The sketches placed in his hands by one of his numerous spies were slightly breathtaking, and he could only imagine what the display would have looked like in real life. Maxim Vasilyev spent a not inconsiderable amount of time studying every inch of the sketches, allowing this new information to assimilate with the profile of Kaz Brekker he had spent the better part of the last three years building.

Though he would never admit it, this took Vasilyev at least a little by surprise. After so long he liked to think he understood Kaz Brekker's psychology better than the Barrel boss did himself. This was not something he would have expected Brekker to do. Kaz Brekker generally had two modes: business and personal. Those who ran up against the business side of the Bastard of the Barrel generally ended up robbed of a considerable amount of their property and perhaps a bit embarrassed but nothing more. That was just business if you ran the biggest criminal enterprise in the world. The personal side was different. If you were unlucky enough to do something which gave Dirtyhands reason to have a personal grudge against you, you were dead. Not necessarily literally-Brekker liked to leave his enemies alive to wallow in their sorrows and regret-but your life as you knew it was over and you'd never get back to where you'd been.

This public display was neither. It was an appeal to emotion, a cry for justice. It was a tactic Brekker had never used before. Barrel bosses tended to stagnate once they were in their positions long enough; they didn't do stuff like this. Of course, Vasilyev had no information to suggest Brekker was stagnant, but he also hadn't expected something this out of character. In fact, if Vasilyev didn't have it on very good authority that Brekker had been involved in the stunt, he would have thought someone else had organized it in his stead.

It was more worrying than Vasilyev wanted to admit but not fatal. He would have to rethink things in light of this, but a Kaz Brekker who could adapt and use new strategies did not ruin Vasilyev's plans. It was actually good he had learned this now and not once things were in motion where there would be no time to change things up. There was no problem.

Still, he was annoyed. At Van Dijk for the ridiculous show of bravado which had caused the Dregs to retaliate in a way which put Ketterdam on the minds of the whole world right when Vasilyev needed to be able to move in the shadows. At his highest ranked spy in the Dregs for not realizing that Kaz Brekker taking a foray into public protest was exactly the kind of thing Vasilyev needed to know about _before _it happened. Weak links like that were what would sink Vasilyev's master plan.

But no, he should think more positively. Things were going fine. Better than fine. Van Dijk and his religious puppet were still providing the distraction necessary for Vasilyev to begin moving things into position. By all reports, Kaz Brekker still hadn't realized there was no code to crack in those letters. Brekker hated not being able to solve puzzles, and Vasilyev was glad Dirtyhands was just obsessive and single-minded enough not to consider if he'd been meant to be distracted by the letters. The letters had been a bit of a test to confirm just that. If Vasilyev could send his opponent on one wild goose chase, maybe he could manage more.

And if he couldn't? Well, when he chose to reveal himself, Brekker would still crumple before him.

After all, he knew who Jordan Rietveld was.

* * *

**When I wrote the Kaz and Nina Bonding Fic, King of Scars hadn't come out yet, so Hanne wasn't in that fic. Since the book came out, I've been trying to figure out how she fits into all this, and I'm thinking she'll show up in Ketterdam at some point in this series. The question now is how long it takes for a ship to get from Fjerda/Ravka to Ketterdam…**

**Also as I'm sure is obvious, I'm operating under the assumption that Nina and Hanne will be together at the end of KoS2 and that Nikolai will still be king of Ravka. I'm also assuming Zoyalai will be an official thing too, though I'm not sure how much of an affect that will have on the series because I can't see Nikolai and Zoya actually being in this.**


End file.
